The synergistic integration of interdependent energy saving systems incorporated as well, set the building apart from the norm.

1. Passive solar gain through fenestration at the south elevation to admit and retain solar heat to the interior.
2. Grid-tied photovoltaic power generation to offset utility supplied electricity and help to manage peak electrical load requirements and used as shading for the passive solar fenestrations during the summer months.
3. Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) technology for heating, cooling, and ergonomics.
4. On site rain/snow capture, harvest and storage for landscape irrigation requirements.
5. Permeable customer parking area in place of paving and Ashlar (recycled) concrete paving substituted for monolithic concrete patio areas allowing vegetation growth significantly reducing the Heat Island affect on site and at building perimeter resulting in increased comfort and decreased energy requirements for cooling during summer months.

You can tell that its proprietor, Dirk Ellis, has a background in mechanical engineering. Oh, and that last “permeable customer parking area” item means that you park your car on a grass boulevard that drains into a recycled water irrigation system. (I can’t help but wonder how that will fare in the next spring storm, or under the snowplow next winter.)

Inside, the StrawHouse is much smaller that it appears (blame it on the bale-thick walls), and features less than half the selection of its uptown competitor the Real Food Store. And while customers might not miss Real Food’s score of bulk granola varieties, other omissions such as tiny sprouts, chile pepper, and cheese assortments put the StrawHouse somewhere between an elegant organic convenience store and a full-fledged health food supermarket. Valley residents would find that even the inorganic gas station Bob’s
Valley Market, down Montana on Lincoln Rd., boasts more shelf space (no solar panels, but great hams).

The smaller selection still has potential. While I have not yet tested their butcher, the StrawHouse expands our local selection of grass-fed Montana beef by offering cuts from Beaverhead Meats in Dillon, adding to Real Food’s McAlpine Ranch meats from Valier. And many Real Food fans frustrated by its teetotaling management hope that Ellis will seriously consider selling Montana and organic beer and wine.

The StrawHouse shines in pure design and comfort. Its welcoming two-story cafe, with deep-hued walls and warm wood flooring, is the kind of place you could spend a morning with the paper or meet for lunch, and a major improvement on Real Food’s utilitarian food court. And its deli wrap menu, ranging from portabello to roast pork, is more inspired than its rival’s wheat-bread and luncheon meat sandwiches.

My only serious complaint about the StrawHouse is its location amid the sprawling cul-de-sacs of North Montana Avenue. I have no problem with that in itself–suburbanites deserve natural foods too–but the big box store neighborhood is incongruous with all of its other conservation efforts. Real Foods is a little less central in its current location, but still walkable; the StrawHouse is within walking distance of the aforementioned cul-de-sacs, Shopko, and little else. Your average in-town Helenan will burn an extra pint of gas to drive past Real Foods (Van’s, Safeway, and County Market too) to get to the StrawHouse’s environmentally correct grass parking spaces and back; I’m no engineer, but my back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that it would take only a dozen-or-so customers driving those extra few miles to burn the same amount of energy all those photo-voltaic cells generate in a day (53 kWh, 180,000 BTUs, or 1.5 gallons of gas).

Given Ellis’s attention to detail, I suspect he considered the importance of location, and land costs and zoning restrictions drove him to North Montana. (Maybe the next new grocer will be more geographically efficient.) That aside, Ellis deserves credit for building Helena’s most architecturally and technologically intriguing new business.

StrawHouse Market
1050 Road Runner St
Helena, MT 59601
(406) 457-1050

The Rathskeller no longer serves members regularly, but anyone can rent it out for a special occasion.Â? I’d say the chance to enjoy a drink down there with a few friends and Helena’s ghosts qualifies.

So I’m not taking any chances with waiting to report my recent discovery of Good Dog, an honest-to-goodness hot dog cart camped on the northeast corner of the Capitol lawn. You won’t find it there every day, but if you do, cancel any other lunch plans you may have and enjoy a locally made sausage from the Real Food Store served on a locally grown-and-baked bun from Wheat Montana. (Real Food doesn’t make frankfurters–yet–so Good Dog gets those from a ranch in North Dakota.)

This is the kind of food cart I would run if I could get out of the office enough. Real Food makes the best sausage around, and with a few return visits you can taste all of them at Good Dog: bratwurst (solid and subtly seasoned), andouille (mace and allspice notes punctuating a hot cayenne baseline), italian sausage (zesty fennel and red pepper), chorizo (deep red chili seasoning with garlic and oregano), and chicken apple sausage (slightly sweet with sage).

Good Dog offers three sausages a day, including the basic frankfurter and one each of hot and mild sausages, grilled to order over a gas-powered hibachi mounted to the side of the cart. There’s organic lemonade and root beer to drink, and homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. My walk home to let Lena out brings me past Good Dog’s location, and I haven’t yet been able to turn it down when the cart is set up. (Here’s to hoping it stays open into the cooler months, or at least reopens for the Legislature.)

Food carts, like roadside stands and the odd hardware store snackbar, deserve our attention because they provide a cheap way for people to offer diverse foods (don’t take my word for it–listen to an economist). For my money, Montana’s most distinctive, most “local” food comes from such unorthodox outlets like Good Dog. So attention Helenans and visitors to the Capitol: Go there now. (And let me know about any of your favorite Montana street food.)

Good Dog
Southwest Corner of Sixth Avenue & Roberts Street
(across from the Montana Historical Society)
Open for lunch, closed occasionally.

The wine list offers a half-dozen wines by the glass, and another 15 by the bottle, fairly priced.Â? We started with creamy artichoke dip touched by mild green pepper, perhaps an inspiration by their former Mexican hometown of Puebla. (We would love to see them try Mole dishes, which were born in Puebla.) Then came the entrees.Â? First, the polenta with mushrooms and tomatoes, covered in melted mozzarella. Next, their specialty Bistro Chicken, a breast padded in hazelnuts, stuffed with brie, and pan-fried. Both dishes were quite rich.

With the cozy room and luscious menu, the Carriage house is one of the better spots in Helena for romantic meals, with its quiet room and Mary’s unobtrusive service (at the end of our meal, she held off on bringing the check to let us continue our conversation without interruption). But when there’s a game on, don’t park to close to the foul pole.

Carriage House Bistro
234 1/2 Lyndale
Helena, Montana 59601
(406) 449-6949

The 2.5 million red-blooded American men aged 18 to 34 who buy Maxim magazine each month will likely drool even more than usual at the September issue. In addition to the magazine’s standard fare of scantily clad models, “actresses” and NFL cheerleaders, there’s a feature on “America’s Top 10 Meat Hogs” – artery-clogging sandwiches piled high that only a carnivore could love. And checking in at No. 2 on the list: The Nuke, a longtime staple at Helena’s own Staggering Ox.

(For some reason the article doesn’t appear on the IR’s website, and the Gazette’s headline refers to a “Helena burger,” which would come as a surprise to the folks at the R&B, Rialto, and Stinkyburger.)

The Staggering Ox, a ferny deli with other branches in Missoula and Spokane, is gradually taking over a local strip mall with its sprawling two-story dining hall cum art gallery–a big improvement over empty retail space. (They once advertised wi-fi, but I don’t whether they still have it.) The Ox calls its sandwiches “Clubfoots,” and they come in hefty cylinders of white bread baked in coffee cans. The winning Nuke (Ham, Turkey, Roast Beef, Swiss, Provolone, Sharp Cheddar, Lettuce & Sauce) actually is on the tamer end of the Ox’s topically-named (and apparently trademarked, but I haven’t figured out the html for the tiny “tm” symbol) Clubfoot sandwiches, which range from the “Yo Momma Osama” (Gyro Meat, Bacon, Black Beans, Gorgonzola, Pepper Jack, Onions, Salsa and your chioce of sauce) to the “Mount St. Helens” (Ham, Turkey, Roast Beef, Pepperoni, Turkey Pastrami, Swiss, Provolone, Sharp Cheddar, Monterey Jack, Mozzarella, Onions, Green Peppers, Mushrooms, Black Olives, Sunflower Seeds, Lettuce & Sauce).

The Clubfoot bread doesn’t add much to the sandwiches other than extra dough, but it’s worth tearing out some of the relatively bland bread to get to the Ox’s daunting selection of ingredients (often from Montana, including roast bison at times) and tangy homemade sauces. You might say that the fresh deli-style Clubfoots don’t belong with true “Meat Hogs” like first place winner the Fat Darrell at R.U. Grill & Pizza in New Brunswick, N.J., which Harrington describes as “a gut bomb featuring chicken fingers, fried cheese sticks and french fries stuffed into a hoagie roll.” Maxim’s Meat Hog article isn’t yet online–and I personally don’t subscribe (honest!)–though I’d be interested in what else made it on this list.

The Staggering Ox
400 Euclid in the Lundy Center
(406) 443-1729

Helena is lucky to have such a large locally-owned market as the Real Food Store, organic or not. With few exceptions, it features some of the best of Montana-made foods, from Willy D’s Sweet Hot Mustard to McAlpine Ranch Pork. Real Foods boasts a wall of nearly one hundred different spices in bulk (including several strengths of chili powder and curry), and the best sausage selection I’ve seen anywhere: from chorizo to merguez to bratwurst to hot italian turkey sausage (which we ate last night), their butcher has a way with the spice rack and meat grinder. These cheese selection at Real Foods beats Safeway and Albertson’s. Their deli and hot food bar serves up organic turkey sandwiches and shepard’s pie, as well as pizzas baked on nutty whole wheat crusts. And, true to their base constituency, they peddle a couple dozen granolas by bulk.

All that, combined with long business hours and prices that often meet the national chains (and beat them during their regular and widespread sales), proves that a home-grown grocery store like Real Foods can not just keep up with the big boys, but thrive.

According to a recent New York Times article (reg. req.), there are 50 times more deer in America–25 to 30 million of them–than there were a century ago:

Across the country, deer cause 1.5 million traffic accidents, $1.1 billion in vehicle damage and 150 deaths a year, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in Arlington, Va. The highest populations occur where guns are banned.

“Back in the early 1970’s, Princeton banned the discharge of firearms, and deer-car collisions went up 600 percent,” said Susan Martka, a wildlife biologist for New Jersey’s Division of Fish and Wildlife.

Now the gardeners are getting even–they’re hiring sharpshooters and bowhunters to protect their greens. Do they make gardening aprons in blaze orange?

The timbered walls gave way to a quiet whitewashed gallery of food-themed prints, and about eight tables topped with linen. A pleasant server presented us with our table, and a short menu and wine list. The selection of entrees were what you might find at the kind of supper club you’d expect on the county road we took–chicken, salmon, lamb–but the preparations were inspired, eclectic, even delicate. I can just remember the calamari, and salmon in broth (tomato?). I also remember looking forward to exploring the rest of the menu in future visits, maybe when summer came around and the lakeside deck at the end of the dining room opened.

But before I made it back to Hauser Lake, Smith left and the Lakeside returned to a tavern. I wasn’t too surprised, since it was all so unlikely to begin with: an inventive and ambitious chef, dedicated to great ingredients and paired with a room with a view, serving year-round at a summer season lakeside bar fifteen minutes outside of Helena. Still, at a roadhouse on some county road far from the resort towns, another Cody Smith will come along. Let me know if you find him.

Earlier, I had introduced them to growlers, though when we brought our two growlers in for a refill they only had one lighter beer (not “light beer”, just something other than a stout, porter, or scottish ale), a bitter. By the time we left they had run out of that beer, and could only offer us the dark stuff for our growlers–we took a jug of scottish ale, but passed on the rest and left with an empty jug. But as we stood there in the parking lot with the forlorn empty growler, Sarah from the Tap Room ran out to catch me, apologized for running out of the bitter, and offered me another growler filled earlier with a pale ale–perfect! She had a deal. The thing was, she wouldn’t let me pay for it.

That’s right, someone from a bar chased after me to offer us a jug of free beer.

The New Yorkers stood speechless for one rare moment, wondering again why they work eighty-hour weeks to live in apartments smaller than our kitchen.

[A]n early reference, in the Trenton Times for 20 June 1883 said “It is called the growler because it provokes so much trouble in the scramble after beer”.

At the turn of the last century, the growler was associated in tenements of New York with the unsavory practice of sending boys to fetch beer for men who were either too industrious, lazy, or mindful of their reputations to enter a bar themselves. Jacob Riis described the practice in his How the Other Half Lives:

I doubt if one child in a thousand, who brings his growler to be filled at the average New York bar, is sent away empty-handed, if able to pay for what he wants. I once followed a little boy, who shivered in bare feet on a cold November night so that he seemed in danger of smashing his pitcher on the icy pavement, into a Mulberry Street saloon where just such a sign hung on the wall, and forbade the barkeeper to serve the boy. The man was as astonished at my interference as if I had told him to shut up his shop and go home, which in fact I might have done with as good a right, for it was after 1 A.M., the legal closing hour. He was mighty indignant too, and told me roughly to go away and mind my business, while he filled the pitcher. The law prohibiting the selling of beer to minors is about as much respected in the tenement-house districts as the ordinance against swearing.

We’ve been to a few Mulberry Street saloons (you occasionally see our favorite, which sat around the corner from Autumn’s apartment, on the Sopranos), but growlers are harder to find there. While there is one small brewery in New York that brews beer worth taking home with you–today, most of New York’s breweries are chain restaurant tourist gimmicks–that brewery lies in the far reaches of Brooklyn, so I never had the opportunity to fill a growler with Brooklyn Lager.

Growlers more common in Montana’s local breweries. They are now glass jugs, not tin cans, and they can keep beer drinkable for up to two weeks–though I’ve never owned a half gallon of beer that long, and once you open a growler you’ve got only a day or two to get to the bottom of it. Take home a growler of Montana beer and a friend or two, and that won’t be a problem.